Special Education Eligibility Categories

1. Auditory Impaired - A child is classified as "Auditorily Impaired" when the child is unable to hear within normal limits due to a physical problem with his or her hearing or difficulty with understanding and processing information.
2. Autistic - A child is classified as "Autistic" when they have a diagnosis of autism.  Autism is a pervasive developmental disability that greatly affects a child's ability to socially interact appropriately and to communicate verbally and non-verbally.
3. Intellectually Impaired - A child is classified as "Intellectually Impaired" when their cognitive and adaptive functioning are significantly below that of other child who are the same age.  A child with a cognitive impairment typically struggles with learning, interpreting information, and solving problems. 
4. Communication Impaired - A child is classified as "Communication Impaired" when they have difficulty with language in the areas of morphology, syntax, semantics, and/or pragmatics.  
5. Emotionally Disturbed - A child is classified as "Emotionally Disturbed" when they exhibit the following: difficulty learning that cannot be explained by intellectual, health, or sensory deficits, difficulty starting/maintaining social relationships, exhibits inappropriate behavior under normal circumstances, and/or develops physicals symptoms or fears that are linked to personal or school problems.
6. Multiply Disabled - A child is classified as "Multiply Disabled" when they have two or more impairments at the same time, not including eligibility for speech and language services.
7. Deaf/Blindness - A child is classified as under the category of "Deaf/Blindness" when they have both hearing and visual impairments.  
8. Orthopedically Impaired - A child is classified as "Orthopedically Impaired" when they have problems with their bones, muscles, joints, ligaments, and/or tissue.  
9. Other Health Impaired - A child is classified as "Other Health Impaired" when they have a chronic illness or health problem that harmfully affects their educational performance.
10. Preschool Child with a Disability - A child is classified as a "Preschool Child with a Disability" when they are between the ages of three and five and have a developmental delay which requires special education and related services.
11. Social Maladjustment - A child is classified under the category of "Social Maladjustment" when they are consistently unable to behave properly in school.  Their behavior must impact their own education, and the education of other students and must not be due to an "emotional disturbance."  
12. Specific Learning Disability - A child is classified under the category of "Specific Learning Disability" when their intellectual potential is much greater than their educational performance in the following areas: basic reading skills, reading comprehension, oral expression, listening comprehension, mathematical computation, mathematical problem solving, written expression, and reading fluency.  
13. Visually Impaired - A child is classified as "Visually Impaired" when they have a problem with their vision that continues even with correction (glasses, contacts, etc.). 
14. Traumatic Brain Injury - A child is classified under the category of "Traumatic Brain Injury" when they have had an injury to the brain resulting in partial or total brain dysfunction, psychosocial impairment, or both.  

Resource: New Jersey Administrative Code Title 6A Chapter 14 Special Education

https://www.state.nj.us/education/code/current/title6a/chap14.pdf